Glen Porter Brock, Sr.

• September 20th, 2021

The destiny and dreams of Glen Porter Brock, Sr. – presently the Honorary Chairman of Illinois Central Gulf Railroad – have long been intertwined with those of the railroad industry.

Son of Loren Ellsworth and Mable L. (Porter) Brock, he was born near Alden, Iowa, in 1896; but from the age of six, he lived in Palestine, Illinois, always within earshot of a train whistle. His father was a locomotive engineer and his brother a brakeman with the Illinois Central Railroad. Through them, the youngster experienced the excitement of the railroad industry, and he too longed to be a part of it. While still in school, sixteen-year-old Glen Brock began working as a caller clerk on the Illinois Central Railroad. This minor position intensified a dream that had been growing over the years he wanted to manage a railroad.

After graduating from Palestine public schools and Central Business College in Indianapolis, Indiana, the young man served in the Infantry at Columbus Barracks, Ohio, from June 1918 until the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918, when his unit was disbanded. The day he was discharged, young Glen Brock took the train from Urbana, Illinois. Still in uniform, with only $98 in his pocket, he enrolled in classes at the University of Illinois to help prepare himself to pursue his dream. During his college years, he disciplined himself to get by on only five hours of sleep each night so that he could gain time for both study and the jobs he held to pay his college expenses. He graduated in 1922 with a B.S. degree in Railway Administration.

Soon after graduation, Mr. Brock married his childhood sweetheart, Esther Goodwin. In December 1922, the newlyweds moved to Mobile, Alabama, where Mr. Brock had accepted a position as a cost accountant with the Gulf, Mobile, and Northern Railroad. Thus began a long and productive association with GM&N.

Mr. Brock became known for his hard work and innovative ideas. For example, in 1935, by which time he was serving as General Manager, he began a hostess service on passenger trains. Because he believed that the hostesses should represent the railroad’s commitment to friendly and dedicated service, each hostess was required to be a college graduate and be medically trained. The program was such a success that it was widely imitated throughout the railroad industry.

In 1940, when the Gulf, Mobile, and Northern merged with Mobile and Ohio Railroad to form the Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio, Mr. Brock was elected Vice President and General Manager of the combined system. His record of innovation continued. In 1946, he helped create a “highway post office” system. Service from the traditional mail car on each train had been limited to towns along the railroad. Under the new system, the new GM&O Railroad refitted a fleet of buses to post office specifications and charged the Postal Service a mileage rate for the “highway post offices.” The first successful route between Mobile and Union, Mississippi, was soon extended from Mobile through Meridian, Mississippi, St. Louis, Missouri, and as far north as Chicago. Also, under Mr. Brock’s guidance, in 1948, the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio became the first-class A Railroad to completely convert to diesel engines. Mr. Brock’s capabilities continued to be recognized by GM&O. From 1952-1957, he served as its Executive Vice President and General Manager. In 1957, he was elected President of the railway. In 1972, when GM&O merged with Illinois Central to become The Illinois Central Gulf Railroad, Mr. Brock became Chairman of the Board of Directors and served in that position until he retired in 1977 when he was named Honorary Chairman-the culmination of 66 years of service, in fifty-two jobs, in the railroad industry.

Mr. Brock has also utilized his expertise in directorial positions with GM&O Land Company, the New Orleans Great Northern Railroad Company, and Gulf Transport Company. He has been an alternate director for the Kansas City Terminal Railroad Company and a member of the National Freight Traffic Association. He has been a director for Protective Life Insurance Company of Birmingham, and the Mobile-based Home Savings and Loan Association, American National Bank and Trust Company, and Merchants National Bank.

No group has benefitted more from his humanitarian beliefs than the people of Alabama. A complete list of Mr. Brock’s civic and charitable activities and awards would fill several pages. He has served as committee chairman, vice president, and president of the Mobile Rotary Club. He has held major positions on the Mobile Chamber of Commerce and committee status with the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. In 1959, Governor John Patterson appointed him to the Alabama State Docks Advisory Board on which he served until 1963.

Mr. Brock’s interest in social improvement is reflected in his record of service to charitable organizations. He was the 1953 General Chairman for the Community Chest Campaign and later served as Campaign Chairman and President and Chairman of the Board for the United Fund of Mobile. Mr. Brock has also been involved as a member of the advisory boards and committees for the Mobile County and Providence Hospitals, the Mobile Mental Health Center, and the Mobile Association for the Blind. Because of his many years of dedicated service, he was named Mobilian of the Year in 1961.

The people of Mr. Brock’s home state of Illinois have also been aware of his outstanding business and civic record. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1959 and was later chosen to be a trustee of that institution. The National Alumni Association of his Alma Mater, The University of Illinois, presented him with the “Illini Achievement Award” in 1969. Four years ago, Glen P. Brock was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor by the State Legislature.

Mr. and Mrs. Brock has two sons, Paul Warrington and Glen Porter, Jr., and seven grandchildren. They reside in Mobile, where Mr. Brock, even though retired, still maintains an “open-door policy” at his office for the employees of Illinois Central Gulf and the citizens of Alabama.

Edward Aubert Roberts

• September 9th, 2021

Edward Aubert Roberts, a quiet force that shaped the city of Mobile, served not only Alabama, but the nation, with a modest spirit, never seeking recognition or reward.

Ed Roberts was the first employee of Waterman Steamship Corporation in Mobile, which was formed to cultivate opportunities for steamship navigation after World War I. Roberts, a Mobile native, attended University Military School and Auburn Polytechnic Institute, prior to becoming Waterman’s chief assistant. On the $125 a month salary of a cargo clerk, Roberts began his career, and his efficiency won him steady promotions that led to becoming president of the company in 1936. During World War II, Roberts headed the largest privately owned steamship line in the nation, operating a fleet of 125 ships. Roberts personally served as an advisor to the director-general of the War Shipping Administration, a position for which he was awarded a Certificate of Merit from President Harry S. Truman. After the war, Roberts served without pay to develop a multi-million-dollar post-war expansion program. In recognition of his services, the Mobile Civitan Club named him the first recipient of its Man-of-the-Year Award in 1948. Roberts also served as a member of the Business Advisory Council of the U.S. Department of Commerce. He also founded another business empire, Southern Industries, which under Roberts’ leadership grew from $1.9 million in total assets in 1946 to more than $28 million in 1964.

Braxton Bragg Comer

• September 9th, 2021

Historians have claimed that the Progressive era in Alabama politics began with the governorship of Braxton Bragg Comer (1848-1927).

Scion of a well-to-do family, this successful industrialist and planter spent four stormy years as Alabama’s governor that were marked by progress in education, railroad regulation, tax funding, and conservation. This same person, however, used strong-arm tactics toward labor and demonstrated a lack of genuine concern for children in the labor force. Comer’s brand of progressivism, which sought to serve the new industrial-urban interests while not disturbing the traditions of the old plantation system, brought numerous collisions with powerful interests.

Braxton Bragg Comer was born at Spring Hill, in Barbour County, on November 7, 1848, to John Fletcher Comer and Catherine Drewry Comer, who moved from Virginia to Georgia before finally settling in the southeastern section of Alabama’s Black Belt in the 1840s. John Fletcher Comer was a county judge in Georgia and in Alabama owned a cotton plantation and a lumber mill. He gave his son a good private education, and in 1864 young B. B. Comer entered the University of Alabama, where he remained until forces under the command of U.S. general James H. Wilson burned the school buildings in 1865 during the Civil War. He subsequently attended the University of Georgia and finally received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts from Virginia’s Emory and Henry College in 1869. Three years later, he married Eva Jane Harris of Cuthbert, Georgia, with whom he would have eight children. The Comers were members of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. Under Comer’s management, the family plantation at Comer Station in Barbour County prospered and grew to more than 30,000 acres.

Like many postwar planters, Comer branched out into merchandising. In 1885, he used the money he made as a merchant-planter in Barbour County to become a partner in a wholesale grocery business in Anniston, in Calhoun County. He sold his interest in the firm in 1890 and moved to Birmingham, where he became president of the City National Bank and bought cornmeal, flour, and textile mills. Comer achieved his greatest business success in the development of Avondale Mills, a textile venture that grew into one of Alabama’s largest industrial enterprises.

While in Anniston, Comer learned that his Atlanta competitors could undersell his and other Alabama businesses because of Georgia’s lower freight rates. By the time he had built Avondale Mills, Comer was the state’s most vocal advocate of controlling Alabama’s railroad rate structure. The Birmingham Commercial Club, which Comer helped to organize in 1893, and the Birmingham Freight Bureau, also led by Comer, both investigated freight rate discrimination and recommended that rates be controlled by expanding the powers of the state railroad commission. Comer’s organized efforts failed to persuade legislators of the need for reform during the 1890s, but he and his allies renewed their efforts at the Constitutional Convention of 1901, where they campaigned to include in the document the establishment of an elected railroad commission with extensive powers to regulate rates. When that effort failed, the reformers compromised and accepted a provision in the document that gave the legislature sweeping authority over railroad rates.

The 1906 gubernatorial campaign in the Democratic primary (complicated by the nonbinding selection of candidates to replace Alabama’s two elderly and ill U.S. senators should they die in office before the next legislative session) was one of the most memorable in Alabama’s history. The Democratic Party dropped the word “Conservative” from its formal name, demonstrating that it was now comfortable with a more Progressive platform. The state’s railroads supported Comer’s chief opponent, Lt. Gov. Russell Cunningham, but the line between progressives and conservatives was not clearly drawn. On issues other than railroad rates, Cunningham was as progressive as Comer, who came under severe criticism for his opposition to child labor reform. Comer was a better campaigner and orator than Cunningham, and his verbal attacks on the railroads so aroused Alabama audiences that he won the primary with 61 percent of the vote and the November election with more than 85 percent. A majority of the legislators elected were committed to rate reform, and with this sympathetic legislature to enact and implement his programs, Comer proved to be one of Alabama’s most effective governors.

Comer’s administration as governor had a profound impact on Alabama. He used his powers to aid both the general public and business interests. His successful anti-railroad campaign protected industry—especially cotton mills—from paying excessive rates, and control of the rates also protected consumers. His administration made great strides in education, public health, road building, and conservation of the state’s resources. On the other hand, Comer’s attempt to bring Prohibition to the state failed, and his lukewarm approach to child labor was not laudable. He discussed reform of the convict-leasing system but ended up simply trying to find ways to make the system bring more revenue to the state. His actions in the coal strike of 1908 demonstrated that his view of labor had changed little from his plantation days. Comer was a progressive, but a conservative one.